How Ranked Choice Voting Can Save American Politics
Vložit
- čas přidán 6. 09. 2024
- Tired of voting for the lesser of two evils? Our current election system is broken, and it yields worse and worse candidates every cycle. Ranked Choice Voting can help solve that problem.
How Ranked Choice Voting Can Save American Politics - Second Thought
SUBSCRIBE HERE: bit.ly/2nFsvTS
New video every Friday!
Follow Second Thought on Social Media!
Twitter: / _secondthought
Patreon: / secondthought
Watch More Second Thought:
Latest Uploads: • Playlist
Spaaaaaace!: • Playlist
What If...: • Playlist
Popular Videos: • Popular Videos | Secon...
About Second Thought:
Second Thought is a channel devoted to education and analysis of current events from a Leftist perspective. Welcome!
Business Email: secondthoughtchannel@gmail.com
Honestly Ranked Choice Voting would not only save American Politics, but Democracy as a whole.
Unfortunately, corporate interests and media monopolies are not solved with ranked choice voting. Not saying it is a bad thing though. Honestly baffled the the US doesn't have it, we use preferential voting to vote for class president in high school haha.
I think it largely depends on the political system. In a system like the us, where the head of state is voted directly I totally agree. But in most countries in Europe, like Germany there are different systems. There are multiple parties in the Parlament, in case of Germany 7 and the chancellor has to get more than 50% of all the votes of Parlament. So usually a consensus between at lest 2, at the Moment 3 Parties is required to become the chancellor in Germany. Further this coalition represents, because of the voting system, the majority of people. But every presidential system would greatly benefit from ranked choice voting. Sadly countries like the us don’t want to change their system even one inch.
I think this is pretty good for countries that have a dual party system, like America or South Korea
It would definitely be a massive Improvement, but it would by no means save democracy in the United States. To do that you would need to go ALOT farther in reforming our elections for different offices to makes sure each office represents the people it is trying to represent as effectively as it possibly can.
Likewise, and contrary to popular belief, ranked-choice voting does not completely get rid of the spoiler effect, as there was still a heavy incentive to rank the party most likely to win first and the party you actually prefer second. This is because the order in which parties are eliminated could potentially mean that the big tent party you most agree with gets eliminated early in the counting, and no other party on your half of the political Spectrum is able to build a coalition large enough to win.
With all this in mind, I would recommend looking into proportional approval voting, which I think would be a great system for the Senate and President (a simple runoff election could narrow multiple victors to one in this case); and party-list voting, which I think would be fantastic for the House of Representatives.
With these reforms America could potentially have one of the most representative democracies in the world, and only then do I think the people would have enough power to start rooting out the corruption which is rampant among their representatives. That and only that is what it would take to save American democracy, at least in my opinion.
@@valdamirlebanon4508 Or you could have direct democracy, where you vote for policies which you like directly, this is far superior to any other democracy type.
Even superior to that is Meritocracy but America ain't ready for that.
Mainer checking in. Having ranked choice voting here has been phenomenal so far, and already in this election we're seeing a tremendously different senatorial campaign, with the independent parties being taken seriously without concern of "spoiling" the election (even if one of them is a big stupid clown man). I'm so tremendously excited to be able to vote for the candidate that accurately represents progressive values without worrying that I'm throwing away a vote and giving an edge to Susan Collins. The Maine GOP has tried around half a dozen times to prevent RCV from being used in the presidential election, and every time our supreme court shut them down. RCV is here to stay in Maine, and I hope that it continues on to be implemented all over the country, to finally break us out of this eternal two party grasp.
Maine Republicans are malding, I can feel it
Go Maine! I hope this catches on with other states.
Mainer here too. I'm excited to use RCV in November!
I remember back in 2017, I was visiting Maine and had NPR on. RCV had passed and was in the process of being implemented, and I remember a Republican saying, "This system is designed by the democrats to never allow another republican to win the governorship."
I laughed. Like, you're admitting your policies are so unpopular that the only way to win is when 35-45% of the vote 'wins' the election. Maybe make a better platform you idiots instead of relying on suppression and exploits to win.
@@Chickenfodder09 Right? When I first heard the Maine GOP say that, I was like "you say that like it's a bad thing."
If only our boomer representatives watched CGPgrey
Tru
So they can be bored to tears?
The STV video mostly.
Sincerely, if only boomers were the problem...that'd be easy. Sadly the problem is muuuuuch larger than just the boomers.
What makes you think they care about representing their constituents? Their role is to win elections and having more viable parties endangers that, for this reason we will never see ranked choice voting or proportional representation even though those things would be better for American democracy.
You said, “you have to rank all four candidates”. That’s not entirely true. You can leave some candidates blank if you do not want to pick them at all.
No, depends on the style
Or you can have a “N/A” option if u don’t want to even put them last
That really depends. My next election is my state election (Queensland), and it’s compulsory preferential voting. It used to be optional, but not any more.
And for my federal elections (Australia), for the lower house you have to number all of them, but for the senate you can number six above the line (which votes for parties only), or all of the boxes below the line, which is all of the candidates. I’m one of the crazy people that numbers all of them, just so I can have the pleasure of putting certain politicians last. And last lectionary here were over 70 candidates for senate. So like I said, I’m a bit crazy. But it’s probably better to just vote above the line, because once you stop numbering, your preferences expire.
So there are many different ways to do preferential voting. In some places you can number just one, or as many as you like. In others, there’s either a minimum, or you have to number them all.
@@katherinemorelle7115 Yep - just voted today in the Australian Capital Territory election - number a minimum of 5 (out of 20-odd). Six people in the queue. The ballot included the "Robson Rotation" of candidates' names. We, like Tasmania also use the version of preferential representation called the Hare-Clark System - but baby steps for the US first. 😁
Can be either way.
It can save American politics, but it would lead to the dissolution of the two-party gridlock. And both parties know that, which is why ranked-choice voting not likely to take hold any time soon. It’s a bit of a catch-22.
How do you change a system when they can change the rules on you at anytime? Imo you can't beat corruption from within. You need to dismantle it to clean it and add prevention measures. You will always be fighting a losing battle otherwise.
That's unlikely, the majority parties would still be the largest common denominator, you might see more small party policies get consideration by the majority governments though.
It'd take a group of third parties to form a coalition with enough collective sway in individual consistencies to get elected to seats in government. How many minor parties do you think would be capable of that with consideration that the entire point of those parties is generally how uncompromised their policies & platforms are supposed to be?
The classic paradox. Power needs to be taken away from those who have it, but those with power will use the power to avoid giving it up at all costs.
Remember when the British government tried to pull out a refferendum to switch to this system and the big parties made this voting system seem frightening to the average person by making campaigns?
@@Kromiball UK citizen here who is only recently becoming less apathetic towards politics in general. I don't remember this at all, but would love a link or two so I could start looking into it!
Why do You Tubers sound like better politicians than actual politician’s...
Because They're Not People In Their 70-90's Who Were Born Wealthy Never Having to Be Useful
What republicans are this good to their base. Unless you’re in Ga then your governor is crazy.
Because they do not need to find common ground. They just need to talk about some ideas.
The reason you'll never hear the established parties proposing this system is that it'll make it possible to change their system and diminish their power. Getting something like this through them would be nearly impossible.
Politicians have to carefully watch every single thing they say. A few select words can ruin their whole career. They've been so mired in politician talk, half truths and not answering questions the public is desperately asking that they just can't vocalise themselves in any other way.
CZcamsrs don't have to speak like that. They can utter their own renditions on whatever they wish. They're subject to scrutiny of course but even that can fall short if they've done some good research.
it makes perfect sense and thats exactly why it wont be implemented in America
It’s in Maine and Massachusetts will vote on it. It’s probably going to to start more in New England and the Pacific Northwest, where most progress in the country starts.
like the metric system
Places are already implementing it here. Don’t be such a pessimist
@@dayviduh im sorry
@@Yzyenthusiast the states have to change it
im minutes away from leaving to take a political science test where i have to write an essay about this at the end thank you dawg
I got u
@@SecondThought Thoughts on Vaush's pov on this?... This... He's controversial I'll just day that.
Did you pass your test?
@@BenReillySpydr1962 Vaush?
@@BenReillySpydr1962 link ?
If the US had ranked choice voting Bernie would have been the nominee. No wonder politicians haven't supported the idea
...and if he did, and if it wasn't for Covid, Trump would swing more than his base his way, due to his "Anti-Socialist" rhetoric, and get reelected in a landslide. In reality today, it would be too close to call, and you would really see voter suppression of all kinds.
He got like 30% on super Tuesday 🤣🤣🤣. You bros just won't give up will you.
@@lhaviland8602 yes. Because we don't have ranked choice voting. Liberals were too scared to vote for bernie because they didn't want him to go against trump and lose, giving trump another 4 years. This is literally the topic of the video and really isn't that hard to understand. Try watching the video again and maybe you'll learn this time
@@SaraH-jn5db Lol exactly. Like why did he/she make that concept so hard.
In at least two of the four US states that used RCV for the Dem primary, Biden won comfortably. In Alaska, he fell barely short of 50% of first choice, and won on second-choice votes.
And I still regret that Warren didn't do better.
"sportification of American politics" You know? It's like I knew what was on your mind. I realized that Americans treat politics a lot like sports, but unlike sports, politics has a great impact on their livelihoods. And the thing is I realized it before you even brought it up in a video! Glad we're on the same page with that because it shouldn't be like that.
love how he showed Bernie , when he was talking about the will of the people.
A Non-Of-The-Above option would be nice as well.
definitely, and the amount of those should not influence the size of "50 %". If you don't have the support of at least half of those who are entitled to voting, you should not win
@@princeali417 by nota we can display our frustration
Just imagine this dude living in Europe and being happy so he can make content like he used to do
Nah. I mean I’d love to not have to worry about the country’s many problems, but I wouldn’t go back to making my old content. I just didn’t enjoy it.
@@SecondThought you found your niche (content and viewers) and I am happy for you for that
@@SecondThought Sorry to hear that my Guy
Really hope you’ll be happy either way
@@SecondThought i liked the old things more, this is just so exhausting
Europe is by no means perfect.
Our nice California governor VETOED RCV as an option for cities, not even a mandate for them to do it. And he’s from San Francisco, a city with RCV
Good. California should opt for Approval Voting instead. RCV is only moderately better than plurality with three, maybe four candidates. But RCV doesn't solve splitting, incentivizes tactical voting, and can lead to convoluted and unexpected results. Approval Voting is much simpler, cheaper, and by all criteria, AV is superior to RCV.
It’s weird that this isn’t in America. That feels weird for me because I’m my country this voting system is normal.
The US has kept the same electoral system that was put in place since it’s founding that was only there because the founders didn’t want to taint the county with uneducated masses. After the industrial revolution and the introduction of public schools, however, the system has become obsolete and yet the US still clings to 200 year old system.
That's not what Lefties want lol.
In every country they use regional voting systems, the largest population hubs are filled with most of the worst ppl in a nation as well, anyone who's travelled knows this.
@@imluvinyourmum I don't think left or right has much to do with this, this is mainly pinned on lobbyists and company interests over tackling actual problems the US citizens face.
I am a conservative and I love ranked choice voting. I hated both candidates in the 2020 election. So having many candidates could mean picking one I really agree with
Regardless of our political opinions, I think we can all agree that improving democracy and combating corruption is a nearly universal interest.
@@eymed2023 true, but you kind of need a bit deeper understanding of how voting systems work than shown in this vid to actually do anything good with it.
@@MusikCassette "Deeper understanding" of voting systems as a whole and the challenges in creating a democratic system, you mean?
That is true, but at any rate, Instant Runnoff is a pretty safe improvement over the "Electoral College + Plurality + Gerrymandering" combo.
Although I still think Score Voting is the best system for single winner elections, maybe with a mandatory second round.
And a proportional system for the parlaments and congresses, too.
@@eymed2023 I have disagree. An "Electoral College + IRV + Gerrymandering" combo is not really an improvement.
Changing to does not do anything about the problems with the electoral nor does it address Gerrymandering.
Within single winner systems I would place IRV on lowest tier together with plurality vote. Hack it is not even monotone.
When you say score voting am I correct in assuming you are talking about sum score voting? Or are we talking about all score voting systems in general? I however do not understand how you would incoperate multible rounds in that. I kind of smell voting anomalies in that Idea, but to tell for sure I would need to know what you mean by that.
we could also talk about the general and specific problems of score voting systems.
However I would suggest to concentrate on legislative bodies first. Because there we have a clear answer on how to do it (proportional representation).
In the case you also are interested in discussing single winner voting systems, I am gonna post some links.
@@MusikCassette What?
I didn't mean using "Instant Runnoff + Gerrymandering + Electoral College".
I meant getting rid of both gerrymandering AND the electoral college AND implementing Instant Runnoff. THAT would be an improvement.
But not as much of an improvement as Score Voting.
And I specifically mean a score-based system where the default score is zero, to prevent cases of unknown candidates winning.
As for the mandatory second round, I mean taking the two most voted candidates and having people vote on which one of the two they prefer.
And yes, I agree that the USA should adopt proportional representation, but that is dealing with parlaments and congress, not presidents.
I'm specifically refering to which voting method to use for single-winner elections. Whereas a proportional system is for multi-winner elections.
It's on the ballot here in Massachusetts and I'm hopeful.
By far the thing I'm most excited to vote for on this ballot
Woot!!
@@aa-bc2qi yeah
I really hope it passes. When I voted early this week (in Maine) it was incredible to put a third party as my first and Biden as my second. I knew I wasn’t supporting a “spoiler” while also letting what I REALLY want be know.
Does anyone know how it works for when they give final counts? Will they say proportion of votes during the first round second round etc.?
We’ve had this in Australia for ages and it works wonders
New Zealands MMP is better lol
no it doesn't we have only a single third party with meaningful power
Don't you have a 2 party corporate duopoly that is almost as entrenched as ours? Don't get me wrong I know third parties are at least a thing (unlike here), but I thought they were still basically incapable of ever challenging the two big parties in any meaningful way?
@@valdamirlebanon4508 Kind of, it used to be a lot more diverse than it is now, but in the past two decades we've had a lot more of a two-party system, the thing is, even though most representatives are of one of the main two parties they have to concede to a lot more of the smaller parties demands to try and convince them to recommend they're respective party as 'choice two'. So it still works. Beyond that, one of our main 'two parties' is actually a coalition of smaller parties that have all agreed to not run against each other.
@@loganb6568 That's because Australia uses that bizarre "STV for slow learners" thing with the "above the line" part of the ballot. It's really no wonder you've basically reverted to a 2+1 system with that in place.
Or like, have a governing body where parties get seats according to their proportion of the total votes. Then it's up to them to form a coalition of 50+% of the seats, and when they have different opinions on certain issues they have to come to an agreement. Maybe party a wants A and C, and party b wants B and D. They parties then agree to both vote for B and C. It's what we do in The Netherlands.
What you're proposing is still a winner-takes-all approach, although I agree it's still a lot better than what you have right now.
That was initially what the US did for its cabinet, but then they got rid of it for some reason
While I absolutely love Party-List voting, and think it would be fantastic for the House and state legislatures, it couldn't possibly work for either the Presidency or the Senate (for fairly obvious reasons).
As such, if PLV was to be implemented in the US it would need to be paired with another system to elect those offices, and at least one of those elections (the President) would need to be a winner-take-all race. Which is why we still need to be having the discussion about the ideal winner-take-all system no matter what.
STV/IRV is only winner takes all in the specific scenario for a single seat outlined. For parliamentary/congressional elections, you have multiseat constituencies of about 4 or 5 seats (those being the numbers needed to guarantee no gerrymandering is possible), with the quota per seat being 25% + 1 in the case of a four-seater and 20% + 1 in the case of a five-seater.
And even if they did stick with single-seat constituencies, IRV (the single-seat version of STV) by itself is still a massive improvement on FPTP in terms of proportionality.
Bad idea. Party insiders control the actual people in power this way.
@@lhaviland8602 Kinda, if you're talking about closed lists. Open and free lists are quite so open to party insider abuse.
The corporate puppets won’t allow this. lol
Depends on the state, southern GOP states would never do this but Maine just implemented this and Massachusetts is putting this on the ballot this year.
Rather the corporate overlords. The puppets have no free will.
Out country is run by the corporates (libs and Murdoch) and we still have RCV
Australia is run by the CCP.
@@imluvinyourmum says every liberal
Seriously...why isn’t this a thing everywhere!?
The people in power knows that it'll hand power to the smaller parties, and they don't want that
@@ruairi4901 Ireland? Not bad, and your voting system ensures a lot of independents have a fighting chance
Because the current system of putting people against each other accomplishes politician and lobbyist's goals better, you can't let the people have power in an oligarchy
Because everywhere includes outside the USA? Where I live, governing requires a majority-coalition. We have 15 parties in parlement, and sometimes a small one is necessary to make the difference
@@ronaldonmg Holland?
I recently moved to Maine and found out about our ranked choice voting system earlier this year and I love it, I hope more states adopt this system in the near future. We also have split electrical votes which is better than the alternative, but getting rid of the electoral college altogether would be awesome.
czcams.com/video/tUX-frlNBJY/video.html
@Tipster Trickster Yeah Other states are slowly adapting Ranked Choice Voting
www.fairvote.org/where_is_ranked_choice_voting_used
No worries We make the USA a better place!!!
I wouldn’t get rid of the electoral college as long as it’s still a two-party winner-take-all system
@@caseclosed9342 good point.
As someone who likes the libertarian party it sucks that I have to vote either democrat or republican. I'm glad massachusetts is deciding on ranked voting.
When did Massachusetts make this decision?
@@Gailsla10 we are currently voting on wether or not to implement ranked voting. It is known as question 2
@@ijs733 Hopefully it allows you more access and exposure to other left libertarians as well
@@cameronmclennan942 for sure, we need politics that actually support the interest of the people and allow the individual to do as one pleases as long as it does not infringe on another person's property or identity
@@ijs733 have a negative liberty is important, to have protections against infringements, there are also really strong arguments to be made for certain positive liberties or freedoms. Encourage you to look into some of the different arguments around that
Lets faced it any voting system single transferable vote, Approval voting, or star voting would be better than what we have now
Absolutely agreed
I'd counter RCV is still worse than our current method, but yes to the other two
@@alanivar2752 I'm genuinely curious why you'd say RCV is worse then our current system? That's not to say that RCV is perfect, it has a lot of problems in its own right, but our system is so unimaginably bad that it's hard to conceive of how a system could be worse than ours without literally setting out with that goal in mind.
@@valdamirlebanon4508 RCV has NO benefits over First-Past-the-Post. Not only does it succumb to Duverger's Law, creating the same problem with strategic voting as we have now, it also fails the same Favorite Betrayal Criterion as FPTP, creating a Spoiler Effect. At least plurality can still pass the goddamn Participation criteria.
Secondly, we may only have one shot at picking The Next Voting Method. RCV has too many flaws, and plenty other mainline voting methods are better. Even if my favorite (Approval Voting) isn't chosen, I still hope it's not RCV.
And on a personal level, Sincere Voting is my #1 priority in Voting Method activism
@@alanivar2752 That's incredibly interesting. Just to get my only point of disagreement out of the way, I think it is unfair to categorize RCV as being no better then FPTP because even if they both mostly share all the same problems, those problems are definitively less severe under RCV then they are under FPTP. However, with all that being said, I do agree that we can and should DEFINITELY do better then RCV, and I also agree that some form of approval vote (mixed with a Party-List vote for the House, since that is the most accurate way to proportionally represent a population and it would naturally help to break political parties apart to a much greater degree) would probably be best for the country.
My only other point of disagreement with you is just about what kind of Approval Voting System should be adopted. I would imagine that you were referring to a normal Single-Winner Approval Voting System, and if that's the case then I would argue that there is a better alternative.
The problem with Approval Voting is that elections tend to be relatively contentious matters, and as such people voting in such elections don't actually tend to vote for enough candidates for any one candidate to receive a majority of the votes that were cast. And I personally feel that alongside doing everything possible to encourage people to vote honestly, a voting system should also ideally always either represent a population proportionally, or produce a condorcet winner more often than it doesn't. Approval Voting by itself does neither of these things, but with a simple change it can be made to without encouraging any kind of strategic voting.
By using a Proportional-Approval Voting System to elect two candidates instead of just one, and holding a runoff election after the fact to determine which of those two will win the office in question, you maintain all of the incentives for honest voting that an Approval Voting System provides while also guaranteeing that a condorcet winner always gets the seat. It's a genuine best of both worlds system that I think would be the ideal system for the US to adopt. Also, in case you are unaware of how Proportional-Approval Voting works, here's a link: czcams.com/video/Gnsgo3z8UIg/video.html
Second thought, if you read this, thank you.
I for most of my life, have been a communist, I recently, during the covid lockdown decided to maybe look at more political perspectives and have converted to Socialism.
A bit after I found your channel, funnily enough through the "is time travel possible" video, then started watching your more recent content and have been inspired.
It's good to see someone so brave to publicly discuss their feelings towards capitalism so passionately, yet so rationally.
You're doing good work here, and for that I thank you.
After constantly nagging her, I convinced my mom to vote for the first time in her life. She's a radlib and doesn't like either candidate (understandably) but I'm still proud of myself.
There’s a much simpler solution for the problem in place in democracies around the world: it’s called parliamentary democracy. all parties get seats according to their votes and form coalitions for majorities. these include small parties as well.. the usa just have to be willing to have a look abroad.
That's not parliamentary democracy, that's PR
This y voting in Canada makes so much more cents we have like 4 major party’s and the there forced to work together so every on feels represented and all the party’s at forced to work together because votes mean seats each seat is a vote
In Canada, we don't have ranked voting. It's still winner take all. The difference is that we have a parliamentary system instead of a presidential system. Our elections are broken up into counties. When a party wins a county they get 1 seat in the house of commons (which is equivalent to congress). However, each county is still winner take all. For example, in a given county if the conservatives get 35% of the vote, the liberals 30% of the vote, the NDP 25% of the vote, and the Bloc 10%, then the conservatives win that county. Once the election is over whichever party won the most counties/seats becomes "the government" and their party leader becomes prime minister.
Did you have a stroke while you wrote this?
@@AndrewSmithDev that’s pretty much exactly how the house of reps works. The only difference really is we directly choose our leader so it could be a different party than the majority of congress which causes a lot of gridlock.
Personally I prefer mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation with a parliamentary system of government. However, in a presidential system like the US, ranked choice definitely seems to be the best option
I agree. I wished the US changed its the constitution. The senate is too powerful (and is only empowering states with smaller populations) and should just be a weaker upper chamber like in many other countries. The House should able to increase its seat number since 435 has the number since the 1910s. MMP would be a better system but RCV is great step in the right direction for the US.
RCV makes sense when electing just one person, like a president, representative, or insurance commissioner, but yeah, I’d love to see congress elected through MMP or Single Transferable Vote, by combining districts and electing three or more from each.
This is how we do it in new zealand and its great ☺
To be fair, there's no reason why MMP couldn't be used to elect the Legislature (or in the US's case, just the House) in a Presidential system. The only difference is that we'd need a different election method for the Executive instead of the Legislature just picking one.
I feel obligated to mention, even tho our current method and RCV are both Two-Party voting systems (Duverger's Law), MMP is a One-Major-Party system. Whether it's Die Union in Germany or Labor in NZ, MMP ensures one party will have a majority of power, and all the minor parties in parliament will have essentially no power.
Switch to ranked choice and get rid of the electoral college. Instant nut
There's no reason to get rid of the Electoral College, and RCV is only gonna make elections worse. A better method would be Approval Voting, and one reason it's better than RCV is because it's incredibly simple
@@Montfortracing how tf is a fully grown adult gonna get confused when using rcv?
@@31ll087 RCV has many steps to elect a president versus AV only has one.
@@Montfortracing selects four boxes instead of 1, soooooo much harder.
@@31ll087 hmm, ok?!
STAR Voting 💫🗳 is the way of the future. We just gonna have to put pressure on these local elections to start.
STAR is vastly superior to RCV. It has an uphill battle though. If you can't explain the disadvantages (and unfulfilled promises) of RCV, you'll have trouble explaining the advantages of STAR. On the other hand, Approval Voting is simplest, cheapest, and exceptionally good.
It works that way you made in the start in for example Denmark, a party needs over 50% of votes supporting them so they need support from other parties so the big parties need to listen to the smaller parties
How are "we" able to accelerate the adoption of ranked choice voting in local and federal elections if politicians don't want it?
Likely a slow process of getting it approved in state elections, and then using that power to vote in representatives that would support it at the federal level.
The best way Democrats and Republicans avoid ranked choice voting is by not talking about it. It’s hard to spin the idea of increasing the power of voters as a bad thing without being seen as opposed to democracy, so they ignore it.
But if the people are talking about it, they eventually have to as well. Spread the word!
get it on local and statewide ballot measures. Go to fairvote.org and see if there's an organization for your state.
Great video! Though I wish it would've mentioned STAR voting or at least scored voting. Voting systems are interesting.
Uploaded 18 seconds ago. My new record. Anyway, You do great job with your videos! Thanks!
Nice :) Thanks for watching!
As an Australian I feel like its my duty to talk about Australian elections and how our voting system is undermined.
Since 2011 both federal and NSW state ruling party is the Liberal (as opposed to Labor) party. Over the past 10 years Australia has experienced a mining boom and a majority (~80%) of the capital gained from the boom was made privately, mainly lining the pockets of already extremely wealthy mining magnates like Clive Palmer (I'll get to him) who get subsidies on top of that. Because of muh goberment conservetiv valus all of the mining industries were privatised instead of nationalised, also the minerals council is a major donor to the Liberal party. Despite having a different voting system there isn't major variety of political thought here with there being 2 main parties and 1 secondary party (the Nationals) with independents and 1 or 2 seat parties. The main problem is media control and coorperate money in politics. In Queensland I think all print papers are owned by Rupert Murdoch, in NSW its a duopoly but it doesn't matter because a majority of the times both Murdoch and 9 Fairfax are pro liberal party. America should update its voting system, but in order to be fair in politics a whole lot will have to be reformed, media, politics, wealth, so on.
America absolutely needs ranked choice voting, it honestly is a travesty that it hasn't been implemented yet.
Even though I’m not old enough to Vote yet I’ve been thinking about how Jacked up our Voting System Is a lot recently
May I point out that RCV is also jacked up, and while we need to fix the method with which we vote by, RCV should NOT be that method?
Hey everyone should look into Score voting (or STAAR voting, which is the same thing). It's even BETTER than ranked choice voting.
Bit of a correction, but STAR and score voting aren't actually the same. STAR voting is actually a kindof response to one criticism of score voting. That being that it HEAVILY incentivizes voters to only ever give candidates either a 0 or a 5 rating. As such, STAR voting picks the candidates with the 2 highest average ratings, and pits the against each other in a Runoff Election where every ballot that rated A higher is a vote for A and vice-versa.
This way, there's at least an incentive to differentiate between your favorites and those you'd just be satisfied with. As apposed to the alternative where you could potentially be empowering someone you dislike by not giving everyone you'd be satisfied with a five star rating.
Yes, here in Australia we have RCV but the 2 major parties have convinced most people that we have a 2 party system and not voting for one of the major parties is throwing your vote away. Every election I have to re-educate multiple people I meant that we don't have a 2 party system like the US and that they should vote for whoever has their favourite policies first so that the minor parties with the better policies get more power/recognition.
The person likely to win Oregon Secretary of State and she has been supportive of implementing RCV in Oregon. Would be absolutely wonderful to see. California would probably benefit the most. Since they already have jungle elections (where democrats can run against each other in the general if they were top 2 in the primary), this would effectively allow other parties to hold power. This is important because dems seem to not be able to get much done and don't really seem to care about the progressive voices in the legislature. This resulted in many progressive bills being held to the last second then by technicality, thrown out. This was able to happen because of a bunch of Southern Californian members who are democrats, but mostly just in name.
Yes! I'm from Maine and RCV is the best way to vote! This gives the people the power back that should have always been theirs!
The solution is Proportional Representation or MMP!
I one-hundred percent agree with your assesment of the benefits of Instant Runoff Voting aka as Preferential Voting, with one exeption. I don't believe that IRV is the ONLY way to reform the american Voting System, but rather one half of a new election system. The other Half being proportional representation or MMP.
IRV has the drawback, that Congress or other houses still only reprsent a majority but not ALL people. Proportional representation on the other hand makes sure, that the seats are distributed proportional to the share of votes a certain Party gets. Therefor All Votes are represented.
In my home country, Germany, this results in 7 parties, who gained more than a thereshold of 5% nationwide being represented in the Parliament. And as none of these have more than 51% they are forced to work together and form coalitions in order to govern properly. As a result they present their benefits instead of bulling their competitors (which are their potential coalition partners). Due to this System we have a relative positive and productive political climate in Germany (and New Zealand who among others also has implemented this system).
But Proportional representation also has its drawbacks. E.G. Votes for a party that doesn't get 5% nationwide are lost. And proportional Voting can't be implemented in races where an office ( mayor etc. ) is elected. I therefore belief that IRV and proportional representation actually complement each other and are together a very democratic and productive System to elect representatives and government officials.
I therefor highly encourage you (@Second Thought) to discuss this system in another Video of yours (which I usually enjoy very much).
Greetings from Germany
Carl
It's so weird how Americans seem to be super eager to implement an only marginally better system instead of getting the real deal. The "downside" of proportional representation that you mentioned is not a core feature of the system. You probably know that many German states have lower hurdles (often it's 3%), and the EU perliament doesn't have one at all (if you get enough votes for a seat, you get a seat).
For other readers: the 5% hurdle was implemented to make it easier for coalitions to form. If 8 parties (most of them very small) have to negotiate for a coalition, it can take very long and maybe you don't get an agreement at all. Reducing the number of parties in the parliament makes it run more smoothly at the cost of not representing smaller minorities. The current trend is to reduce the hurdles or to remove it completely.
thank you for disagreeing respectfully allot of people have so much hate inside them but I'm glad to see that you can disagree without spewing insults. I hope you have a good weekend carl!
@@iqqh Thank you, kind regards to you too. But I actually don't want to disagree with IRV. I think that this system shoulb be applied in Germany ( and every other place for that matter) too. What I wandted to highlight was, that IRV makes sense only in a limited range of races, and that I believe that when it comes to parliamentary elections Proportinal Representation and MMP ( a Variation of Proportional Represantation which also enables local represenatives) makes a lot more sense. Plus: IRV can be applied to party lists in MMP. Neither System is therefore exclusive! The combination of the too is what makes a good System.
@@iqqh I mean, there's just no reason to insult here. :D People just want the US system to improve, so he's just giving suggestions on how it could be done.
I think, Germany's hybrid system of direct candidates (who represent districts) and party lists (which make the end result proportional) makes a lot of sense for the US, as both countries are already pretty similar in structure.
@@faultier1158 That's for the Bundestag, the equivalent of the US House of Representatives. The Bundesrat, equivalent to the Senate, has emissaries of the various state governments, which is what the US used to have before Senate seats became elected.
One of the most important topics in our nation, continue to find ways to support this where you live!
I love Second thought! They inspired my sci-fi/futurist channel!!
Ive been arguing for this for years. It forces politicians to move towards the middle. It gives the voter more choices. It screws over the far left and far right candidates. Its something we should have implemented 40 years ago in my opinion.
I'm for this. Glad to see someone on the left does too. I'm basically a centrist/neoliberal, and a ranked choice system would arguably advantage centrist positions.
Honestly, I'm not sure it would help anything. I don't live in the US but for the sake of the exercise, imagine instead of Trump/Hilary you had the other 2 candidates too to choose from. If I'm left leaning, I'd have Sanders as 1st, Hilary 2nd, Pence 3rd, Trump 4th maybe? But if you're truly left leaning, only Sanders is a "real" choice, and even then a quite moderate one.
Even if there were other, more left leaning options, it'd be safe to assume they'd get eliminated real fast and it's likely that the elected candidate would be my 3rd (or 4th) choice - reflected as, say, 52% support for that candidate, counting MY vote as endorsement when in reality I would've NEVER voted for that person and I'd rather have them as far from office as possible.
Minority parties would STILL have no chance of winning, but it would muddy the results a lot more. It might have helped with not getting Sanders removed from the race or having an option instead of Trump for conservatives, but it really doesn't help "democracy" much
I've been saying this exact thing fit a year or two now, ever since I learned about how it works in Australia.
I've been reiterating this for a while. Telling people to vote for the Green Party candidate *is* throwing away your vote in the current system. We need RCV before that becomes a rational way to vote. Hopefully we can make RCV happen on a larger scale.
In New Zealand it works pretty well. We have an MMP system for national elections. An MP gets a seat in parliament either by being elected to a seat by their electorate, or their party exceeds 5% of the popular vote. This results in coalition governments. The current government have a clear majority since the last election, but are still in partnership with left leaning parties. The reason is they may need their support in the next election to form a majority coalition. Before MMP it was first past the post, which translated into a 2 party system where all alternative votes were a waste.
Ranked choice is the second worse system after plurality.
Ranked choice voting still splits the vote 1/3 of the time. It’s glitchy and throws your votes away. Look up approval voting, or even better, STAR Voting.
Agreed. I'm seeing so much promotion for "Ranked Choice Voting" (as if IRV is the only ranked system) from people who have no concept of the underlying math that makes IRV complete trash.
I like this video from EqualVote for visualizing the problem, though I wish their presentation was better.
czcams.com/video/-4FXLQoLDBA/video.html
Here in Scotland, we cast 2 votes. One for the constituency and one regionally. The constituency vote is FPTP and the list vote used the D'hondt method, which means if a party gets a majority on the constituency vote, it's hard for them to scoop up a lot of the list seats as well.
As a Swede seeing that ad against Biden by trump is absurd. Our ads are not on TV and are just cardboard pieces with ads saying that they will do this for the country.
That ad was ridiculous, at first I was sure it had to be a joke 🙄
Minor correction: we don’t use ranked choice voting in New Zealand, we use Mixed Member Proportional
Mixed member proportional??
@@feather563 you get 2 votes, one for party one for local candidate
The number of votes the party gets dictates how many seats it gets, the seats are filled up with winning local candidates and the rest from a party list
We need Ranked-choice voting all over the world!
MMP is better
@@zackgravity7284
Why?
@@Songbird645 represents the public better. Here in NZ parties can form coalitions if no one gets over 50% votes so minor parties are allowed more power, which is important
No we don't. It would be a MASSIVE improvement in the US but a lot of countries across the developed world actually already have much better systems then RCV, like Party-List Voting or MMP, and as such RCV would be a serious downgrade for them.
Approval Voting is simpler than RCV
haven’t even gotten one minute into the video yet, but i’m so happy you made this video, thanks so much
Hope you like it!
7:44 I see this layout was intentional.
Wow, that's an amazing ideia, my country (Brazil) could see huge steps forward if this was implemented here,
And that's why we'll never get it.
that username tho
RCV is on the ballot this year in Massachusetts. I have no idea how well it's doing within the general population, but I more than happily voted for it
2:40
correction: you don't have to rank everyone
I’m a huge advocate for RCV and glad you made this video and did an incredible job of it, but the real question is.. what song is this playing in the background? It’s 👌🏼
Who's outside my house yelling "Vote Jo Jorgsen" I'll never vote Libertarian.
I have read about this before but didn't quite understand it. I usually prefer text, but this was brilliantly explained and made me fully understand. This is of course the way forward for USA, unless you want to change governing system entirely. This winner-takes-all mentality stems from a time when democratic rule was considered very radical, and many believed (and the monarchies ofc propagated) that a strong leadership was absolutely necessary, or else the country would crumble into chaos. Proportional rule/representation was considered anarchy, or at least deeply problematic, and not entirely uncalled for, as many people from lower class(es) lacked basic education. So this was a compromise made to make a better case for democratic rule. Since then much has changed, and proportional rule is more the norm. But the perception of the need for a "strong" disproportional rule still flourish in those parts where it's still in use. This was and still is mostly prominent in Great Britain, so this ordeal can be blamed on the Brits ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Ranked voting could also put an end to the counterproductive electoral college that is obsolete and has also been twisted and manipulated to become another tool for the duopoly, as it would make it look completely stupid.
I’m really hoping we have rank choice soon. The two party system is the reason why America is divided and we can’t pass universal healthcare and stop global warming for instance.
STAR Voting is a better alternative, there are major problems in traditional Ranked Choice voting.
I love this vid, but some critical info is missing here: How do we switch systems? I'm assuming writing or calling our representatives, saying " Governor Blabla, please change the system in a way that may threaten your career", is not going to cut it.
It might actually cut it if you get enough people to follow suit. Though I'm not sure how much is "enough".
Look for groups advocating for RCV in your state. And go from there.
If you live in Illinois you can sign up here www.fairvoteillinois.org/
in most states, the supreme court usually strikes down any threats or actions that could restrict choice. There are groups such as RepresentUs that have a plan for how we can create a movement for ranked choice voting through protesting and supporting it within individual states first.
thank you for this wonderful description. It really sounds beneficial in our personal attack filled elections in the USA.
This is horrible in most circumstances here in Australia.
An example:
40% first pref: pink, second pref: grey etc
35% first pref blue, second pref: grey etc
25% first pref grey, second pref: yellow etc
Grey gets eliminated on first round and out of the 2 remaining options pink wins with only 40% of the vote despite grey having 25% of first pref and 75% of second pref. Pink effectively wins off a plurality it sucks.
It's still better than what we have in the States. It's not a perfect solution but it's change.
@@mcsquisherton Yeah its only marginally better though, why not replace it as with a system that might actually work though like score voting. Here the major parties destroy, 40% first pref gave 70% of seats and 10% first pref gave 0.6% of seats. It is still deeply flawed.
@@lolcookie2 I'm sure there's better systems out there, I'm just wanting any change anything. I'm down for almost any system that'll give my that.
This political content is much better than your old stuff (which I did also enjoy). It's easy to tell your very passionate about this, keep it up!
It can't. What the US needs is to adopt a proportional parliamentary system like we have in Sweden. You need to get rid of the presidency and the senate. As long as you have the current system you will have a two party system without true democracy.
I agree, this sounds like an over-complicated solution. Proportional representation seems like a logical and simple solution
@@alvarosilva9527 Don't get me wrong tho, this is a step in the right direction, but it cant save american politics.
Star Voting is significantly better for winner takes all races. RCV only works well in Multi-member districts (STV).
Last time I was this early I didn't have a girlfriend
I still don't have one😂😂😭
Wonder why
@@TheCoke254 911 I would like to report a murder
A wonderful explanation ... thank you !
American voting under that system would just be
1st Democrat
2nd Republican.
The current system isn’t really majority gets the presidency or whatever they’re being elected for, true majority would work better.
I think that having more than two parties is a far superior system though
There is a libertarian party and a green party. There are also independents. The problem is that nobody wants to vote for them because there is no chance of them winning. If you were to vote green instead of democratic in the 2020 election then that's one less vote for the democrats meaning it's more likely that Trump will win. So voting for someone besides one of the two major parties, democrats or the republicans, is equivalent to throwing away your vote. That's why we need ranked voting as Second Thought explained. You could vote 1st green and 2nd democrats. That way if the greens don't win your vote will go to the democrats.
Not necessarily, most people I know would like to vote 3rd part but feel like they’d be throwing away their vote. Ranked choice voting would be the push 3rd parties need for the 5% required for federal funding.
@@AndrewSmithDev let’s be honest the US political parties are all right wing even the communist party
@@hithere5553 I’m from the Uk where there’s a noteable third party and voting is flr constituency, it simply doesn’t change how people vote.
Range Voting actually fixes this. Ranked-choice is being pushed around and supported bipartisanly, because it's a scapegoat that won't solve anything.
We use Mixed Majority Proportional (MMP) in New Zealand where you pick the party not the candidate for the general election and a local party member for a seat in parliament.
Even though I often disagree with you as I’m centre right, this is a great idea. Hope Britain does it, not the socialist part at the end though.
RCV is so benificial that I'm convinced the corparates wouold never allow it to happen on a federal level
A two-round voting system is also a good alternative
We have a two round system for the senate over here and, while better than FPTP, it is not perfect. Specifically, it tends to lead to a three-party system. And the second round usually has abysmal voter turnout, which is not good either. I think it would be better to use Ranked Choice and be done with it in a single round.
I'm not even socialist and I support this.
I will say I really appreciate you providing a non capitalist/mainstream explanation of the world. It helps keep me aware of where the extremes are, especially when all the media and propaganda efforts are out to keep me from figuring any of it out.
This certainly seems better, but you're forgetting one important factor: people are lazy. It's hard enough to get them to bother to pick a single candidate and go out and vote, let alone trying to get them to consider multiple candidates and then rank them first. Maybe telling them that they're making a tier-list could trick them into thinking of it as more fun. 🤔 Regardless, the most important thing Americans need to do to not constantly feel shafted is to abolish the archaic electoral college. 😒
I’m gonna quote my comment here:
“I feel there’s a much simpler way. Have 2 part elections, like we do here in Brazil! In the first half, you vote for whoever you want. If a candidate has 50% of the votes plus 1 singular vote, he’s elected, but if it’s split betwen 2 cadidates (like in the video with purple and gray), then only those 2 candidates go to the second half of the election. As, in that example, 68% of the population want one of those 2, the rest HAVE to pick a side at that point, for there’s only those 2 options.”
Ireland, new Zealand, and Scotland use a proportional version of this with multiple winners and lower thresholds. It's much better than ordinary ranked choice voting because everyone gets representation.
For me, this is what a perfect electoral reform process in the US would look like:
1. Get rid of the EC, go with RCV/IRV/AV for POTUS
2. Go for a proportional representation system (maybe open list, but Americans still like their local reps, so let's go with STV or MMP)
3. Stop using electoral machines, go back to paper and pen (get a shitload of people trained to count them)
4. When they get an ID, everyone must be registerd as voters too (if states want to shove their mandatory voter ID bullshit too, then getting a voter ID must be free)
5. Get rid of gerrymandering; see point 2
6. Add more polling stations, no one should wait 12 hrs in line to vote
And so on and so forth
Why remove electoral machines?
@@mammadudiallo7156 instead of going back, I would futurize and develop a blockchain voting system so people can just vote on their phones
Thanks for covering this! Next, please cover STAR voting too (more statistically elegant than standard RCV, lower probability of the first-place finisher losing in the recount).
This is exactly what need to be shared as much as possible.
Understand it first then talk about every chance you get.
Do it for your country, children, their children, and the world.
Never heard of this system before. Thanks!
I hope to move to this nationally!
yes we desperately need this!!!
Nice you coincidentally helped me with my presentation for the BRD (Bundes Republiks Deutschland).
We use rcb in scotland and also proportional representation it is great. Also in my Westminster constituency it's basically a four way split and the win with like 30% if rcb it would be so much better. Also in my Westminster we have to vote for labour not snp some people say to stop the tories it is so weird
One main advantage that doesn’t get mentioned or given any emphasis is that RCV increases the power of democracy and collaboration by enabling candidates to adopt ideas proposed by opposing candidates to: 1) win ranked votes from people that support their opponents; and most all 2) add, revise & improve their proposals/solutions in their campaign platforms.
This is such a well made and informative video. I'm just commenting for the sake of the algorithm, I hope this video reaches a lot more people! Thanks for taking the time to make this video 👏
In Scotland everyone tends to be happy to vote in Scottish elections but it's the same as the US when it comes to UK elections, would love to see this change everywhere
How are the SNP so successful?
@@ricardobarahona3939 Their main selling point is Scotland first, which to a country which often feels ignored in London makes them very electable, they also don't have to appeal to larger populations in England so can taylor their policies for Scotland, when there are no other Scotland only parties that spring to mind
@@finlayhumberstone8137 Will there be another Independence referendum? I guess unionist parties look bad since at the end of the day they care more about England (also due to having more voters). Many anti-independence Brexiteers sound idiotic when whey say that the SNP want Brussels to be their master instead of London but that’s seems like a massive false equivalence comparing the power of London has had over Scotland than the EU (especially where as a apart of the council, one veto vote can stop policies that would hurt a member state).
@@ricardobarahona3939 complete agree, I think it all depends on what happens in Westminster, I think they're the only ones with the power to allow a referendum. If there was one and if Scotland is treated better then I think we would stay but if it continues this way, especially if there's a vote in the next three years I think we would leave. But I doubt there will be one soon
heard of it before but didn't quite understand it-i now do, thank you !
Everybody gangsta till STAR voting shows up.
Yes. Get the word out!
"complaining about a problem without proposing a solution is called whining" - Allegedly from FDR (not sure if it's actual quote but I agree with it all the same)
I say this to show my appreciation for your channel, for which I am truly impressed. I am a big fan of independent progressive media like the young turks, damage report and majority report but one thing they miss that you capture is solutions. They highlight the problems facing us quite effectively but you really have some very logical solutions. I admittedly didn't even know what rank choice voting was (and I consider myself well informed with politics). So I learned something new here and am left wondering why the hell we aren't doing this.
Needless to say, I am a big fan of your content. Keep up the good work.
We’re trying to implement Rank Choice Voting in Massachusetts statewide! Vote “YES” on Question 2!
While Ranked Votes are preferable to FPtP, there is one defect with the system (as seen in the 2017 Canadian Conservative Party Leadership Vote):
Scenario: You have two major favoured candidates, but their supporters HATE each other. Secondly there are many other candidates (13 total in this case).
Round One: Due to the large number of candidates, no one gained more than 25% of the vote. The top two candidates gained ~24% each with everyone else gaining less than 10% of the vote each.
Round Two - Eleven: As the lowest candidate kept dropping, the third highest candidate started to raise in the rankings (due to him being everyone's 2nd choice). By the Eleventh Round he was in First place (but still short of the 50% mandatory majority).
Round Twelve: The "weaker" of the two top candidates is eliminated and his ~24% support is added to the Third place Candidate (again because he was everyone's second choice), and he wins the race.
Result: The top candidate (a rather toxic individual) left the party and took his supporters with him. The Third place candidate wasn't one of the top two candidates because he lacked the political skill needed to be a top tear political leader, and as a result lost the next election (one that many people said he should have won hands down). He was forced to resign by the party afterwards.
Ranked choice is on the ballot in Massachusetts! #YesOn2